


make me

by nereid



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a game of sorts, that Abed and Annie play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rubiconjane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubiconjane/gifts).



There is a game that they play some mornings, maybe during breakfast, maybe before breakfast, but after Annie has already matched her shirt with her skirt with her socks with her shoes with her lipstick with her skin; or after that, but before Abed has already changed out of his pajamas, because usually he stays in his pajamas in the morning while one of them makes breakfast. Some days Abed thinks that this game has been going on for so long; it might not be relevant at all how the game started in the first place. The game is simple but it works - for whatever value of "works" is at play here. It works for them. And so every morning, with Annie’s clothes properly ironed and her nail polish never chipped, not even a bit, with Abed’s hair a bit messy, and maybe the top button missing on his pajama top, which she notices, mentions and promises to sew back on, sometimes they play.

  


It's not a game. Or to be precise, it's not _only_ a game. None of them know this now, or perhaps they do, in some hidden compartments of their minds. But this morning, standing in the kitchen, Abed sitting on one of the barstools and Annie leaning on the kitchen sink, they don’t know. That knowledge will come later.

  


"Make me -"

  


It is Annie who starts today, tender and still quiet and soft, "a Prince, waiting to be rescued in a tower."

  


Abed does. He climbs on the imaginary tower, which is the sofa, and he leans sadly through the tower’s only window, which is the armrest, and he sings beautifully, which is reciting, and he calls out for someone to rescue him, which is exactly what it is.

  


"Make me," Abed says next, "a medieval action heroine."

  


Annie brings out the plastic sword from her room, which is Ellix, the long forgotten sword buried beneath the mountain, and she flips her hair, which charms all the men and women, and she pretends to put the sword through the sofa, which slays the white dragon Orachus, whose fire had burnt down so many villages in the land. And in the end, the Heroine saves the Prince from the tower, even without Abed asking Annie to do so. All is right with the world.

  


"Make me," one of them is always saying, and the other one is always doing.

  


Some mornings are different, of course.

  


What happens on this one morning is that another school year at Greendale has come to its end. What happens is, Abed finds out later, Annie wasn’t sure there was going to be a next one, and that was scary. What happens is one Monday morning, fragile sunbeams tracing her skin, Annie stands indecisive in front of a mirror, or maybe not indecisive, maybe something else Abed can’t decipher, with a lock of hair held by her fingers between a pair of scissors.

  


"Abed?" she calls out for him.

  


He walks towards her, stopping by the open door, perhaps unsure how to proceed.

  


She's turned towards him now, and she's looking at him. She opens her mouth a few times, as if to say something, but for the first few times she does this, nothing happens. Her fingers are still holding her scissors and holding her hair.

  


"Make me someone brave," she says with something resembling a taste of finality in her voice then; if voices could have tastes. He nods, and after a moment, he leaves the bathroom. This is big, Abed knows. This will require some proper scene setting.

  


So, like this:

  


In an apartment, which is a castle, in front of a mirror, which is a mirror, there is a girl. The girl is in her brand new white-with-yellow-stripes pajamas, and there is a pair of scissors in her right hand, trying to position itself perfectly somewhere between her current hair length and the height of her ears.

  


He takes a breath or two, and perhaps he switches into a role, or perhaps he doesn’t.

  


He doesn't knock on the bathroom door: that would remove this scene from what he wants it to be: a girl in a bathroom, a boy who is a sudden and momentary interruption, and seconds later, again, a girl in a bathroom, braver than before. His face is expressionless, or at least it is as close to it as he can get it to be. Abed opens the door. Annie looks at herself looking at herself in the mirror, and then she looks at him.

  


"You have to put your weight behind it," Abed says. And then he steps out of the bathroom and closes the door behind him immediately. There. Done.

  


These minutes, waiting for Annie to come out of the bathroom, with some change in her hair or no change at all, Abed remembers later how they seemed longer than most minutes do. Perhaps this is significant.

  


When Annie comes out of the bathroom, her hair is three or so inches shorter. Abed thinks of movies, rewinds some in his mind, trying to find an appropriate reaction hidden somewhere in his mind to all of this, Annie cutting her hair, Annie with less hair, Annie smiling coming out of the bathroom. He can’t find it, not this quickly anyway. So, Abed smiles back.

  


"You cut your hair," he says.

  


She smiles, and then she makes them breakfast, still in her pajamas. But her nail polish still matches the nail polish on the toes of her bare feet, matches her lipstick, matches her skin.

  


There are some things he doesn't tell her.

  


For instance:

  


In the most silent of all the silences and the most deep of all depths, he makes her a queen of the only kingdom he owns, and just like that, Annie Edison is the queen of his mind, with a simple imaginary flick of his imaginary wrist. There. Magic. He hands the reins to her willingly, and it matters that this of his free will - otherwise she would not have reacted as well, even unsure what she was reacting to, she would have said, Abed, is this really necessary, and she would have smiled in her best impression of innocent, doe eyes and he would've pretended then to fall for the act because he knows now, he's learned that she will take care of him. Fake doe eyes does not mean fake caring, and that line has some rhythm to it which helps him remember that it’s true. He had trouble remembering that, during what he now thinks of as his early Greendale days and he had it written out as a reminder in all the notebooks he now keeps under his bed because no one looks into those anymore, and he never writes it in the college binders that Annie prepares for him to use, because she knows college is important and he knows this now too. He learns, he goes on, he makes progress.

  


Abed knows things these days, it seems to him, more every day, and that is alright, because that is the way it is supposed to go. He knows that too. He does not sort the new knowledge neatly into color-coded lists - he is learning from Annie, but he is not Annie. He shouldn’t be. She is supposed to be Annie, and he is supposed to be Abed. But, he sifts through the new pieces of information sometimes. Weighs them and measures them. Lets them stand the test of time before pronouncing them truths. Abed is a methodical and precise student.

  


He thinks sometimes about telling her the things he learns because if he is doing his calculations correctly, and he has double and triple checked just to be sure, so he believes he is, what his calculations amount to in the end is this:

  


Annie is not exactly who she is when she is Leia. But when she is Leia, she is also Annie. When Abed is being Han, he is also Abed.

  


This seems important.

  


He is not sure how to tell her.

  


The game goes on. They play and play and play and maybe she calls in sick one day at her summer job, which she assures him isn’t a big deal even if he knows it is, and maybe he forgets to change out of his pajamas even after noon some days, which is also a big deal.

  


Make me someone, make me something, make everything, make anything, just make.

  


And then:

  


One night, when Annie has gone to bed already, or Abed thinks she is, and he is alone in his bedroom, then he knows. He gets up, closes the door gently behind him, and knocks on her door.

  


She opens the door, at the same time pulling on her robe.

  


"It's not just a game."

  


"What?"

  


"It's not just a game. We're acting out things we want for ourselves in a safe environment. _Make me_ is not a game, it's a safe word."

  


"Abed -"

  


She might be pleading for something, he's not sure. Her right hand is on his elbow now, an unscripted touch.

  


"I want it to be real. No more safe words."

  


Annie's still looking at him, still touching him. No running away now. She nods slightly.

  


He leans down and whispers into her ear, and this may be the bravest he has ever been.

  


 

  


"Make me," he whispers.

  


She does.


End file.
